Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is in the news today as it announces its proposed hiring of over 2500 workers for its dispatch center, the fourth in France, scheduled to open in the second half of 2013. The company also filed a form S-3 for “shelf registration” of “senior or subordinated debt securities, common stock or preferred stock, either separately or represented by warrants, depositary shares or purchase contracts.”

Flowers Foods (NYSE:FLO), the country’s second-largest baker by sales, may be a potential bidder for assets of bankrupt Hostess Brands Inc which is now under liquidation, says The Wall Street Journal. Flowers, which is said to be nursing excess capacity, maybe eyeing Hostess brands to fill up the vacuum. The acquisition could also expand its reach out of its concentration in the southern US.

Remember GM’s huge Impala sedan from the 1970s? General Motors (NYSE:GM) is planning to give the venerable, 54-year-old brand a fresh look that incorporates technology and fashionable new features. To be launched in April, the all-new Impala is part of the automaker’s larger plan that involves the redesign of 13 cars and trucks by next year.

Star fund manager, Bruce Berkowitz shed some light on why he holds so much of retailer Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD): “The value of Sears [which trades near $60] would be over $160 a share if the land on the books was fully valued.” The likely upside from a recovery in the retail sector aside, Berkowitz is enamored of Sears’ “gigantic cash flows from the closing of locations, the pulling out of the cash from inventory, work in process and distribution centres.”